Anything is Possible
by Foul Fountain of Flies
Summary: When people are bound through their sorrows, something gives way in order to open another path. One shot. KakashiXKurenai.For Santeira.


Anything is Possible

Disclaimer: As per usual, Naruto and its characters are not my property.

Summary: When people are bound through their sorrows, something gives way in order to open another path. One shot. KakashiXKurenai. For Santeira.

A/N: I think I should give a brief description of the setting. This takes place shortly after Asuma's death, under pressure of further possible attacks on Konoha. Kurenai, I would assume, is granted a break due to her loss.

The Kakashi here is a complete emo. This would reflect whatever sorrow he might've suffered from because of his friends' and family's death.

On a final note, this piece is for Santeira, whose imagination and eloquence still leave me dumbfounded (in a very good way) :)

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Whenever he saw her on the front porch of her now barren house he would remember the many times when, as a child, he would peer down from the cliff on the end of the village's landscape and see for himself the distance he had to fall through in order to meet a rather grotesque end where he'd be lying on a pool of blood and several severe fractures. He would inch closer and closer to the edge, feeling the breeze with a far sharper clarity for what could be the last time and breathe it in, taste it like the poison that life had forced down his throat, until he'd back down a few steps in reverse out of instinct. An instinct he knew he didn't have any explanation for except that he had so much more yet in store, that he couldn't die yet because life hadn't taken a good look at him, hadn't sucked enough out of him. Yet, even when he hadn't taken the plunge, he would feel that he'd been pushed over the cliff more than a thousand times and stay convinced that he had died along with the people he dared to value as his friends and family.

By the end of this scenario the sun would have set, and he would wish to hear an older person's voice calling him to dinner down from below where houses were propped up along the blocks and life seemed so much better. But the wind would become still and he would trace his way back home to find the dining table empty, the shadows constant and solid as if they didn't know where else to settle if not in this silence filling his entire house like Oxygen, one that never failed to suffocate him as he lay alone in the dark and pierced through its many layers with one flash from his newly acquired Sharingan.

He would try to come to terms with this feeling, or the melancholy absence of it, for a long time until he began noticing Yuhi Kurenai in her wordless mourning, her movements strained, her face pale; a conduit of endless sorrow. He didn't know how he looked back then--anyone who could've told him was already dead--but he was certain the same affliction had now descended upon his fellow teacher and that the only way out of it was the very cause of it: death. He recognized that look without seeking to; he recognized it because he'd felt it was there all along on his own, doomed to linger there until every feature was erased. Since childhood, he had learned to keep the sadness all to himself, fearing to contaminate acquaintances along the way as though the disease would cause instant death to those who were fainter of heart. As such, he had learned with difficulty to not publicize his grief, allowing no one in his confidence, and turn his attention to some things a lot closer to life. He had found life in books, in the missions he was assigned to, in his students, and in the village when the sky was bright and laughter was everywhere, on the corners of the streets, under roofs, above them, on the faces of the residents he had sworn to defend with his life. He was careful not to let anyone in on his secrets, the deaths of loved ones he had to deal with at a very early age, not because he was a private person but because he refused to cause them sadness. Nobody deserves to be this lonely, he often told himself.

He then invited Yuhi Kurenai to a tea in an effort to obtain closure. After Sarutobi Asuma's death he knew there was little comfort to be given to the wife he left behind. But it was better than nothing. He watched her drift between her words, verging on a trance, as she cast her eyes down to her lap and belly.

"How many months?" he said, not knowing what else to ask or where to start.

"Three," she replied, and when she didn't follow on he racked his head with ideas on how to pilot her attention away from tears. He had long rehearsed words of consolation under his sleeve and would at any time unleash them if worse came to worst. But she contained her silence in a long stretch with no hint of tears tripping down, until, even, he was sure something was going to burst. When still she didn't speak, he began tossing amateur pieces of advice on how the unborn child should be treated, surprised at his ingenuity at steering an otherwise spontaneous conversation away from a sure deep trap of which there could be no way to crawl out.

"I know what you're trying to do." she said after a while. "I'm grateful, but this isn't something you should burden yourself with."

He stared at her as if to inspect her, to disagree with her. As he opened his mouth he found the words shrinking back within him and he could almost laugh out loud at his own stupidity. He had no idea how to comfort anyone in their loss; when he'd lost everyone, no one was there to do the comforting for him. He never heard the words he needed to hear, leave aside feel the sympathetic tap on his shoulder that's meant to reassure one that everything's going to turn out fine. He only knew what it was like to lose all sense of home and belonging in one fell swoop after another.

"I'm sorry. I suck at this. I just wish people wouldn't... never mind. I'm sorry." he mumbled and in a long drawn motion, rubbed his forehead as if the act would wash away the thoughts that were neatly filed down in his head. Their sadness wasn't his responsibility but why would he go through such lengths to make them avoid it?

"Don't be sorry. I appreciate your kindness. Thank you, Kakashi." she stood up then, leaving her cup unfinished and cold, and the seat she'd taken as empty as it ever was.

He perched on his bed that night, observing the heaven which was tainted with gray and dark blue patches that occasionally switched places. Like the people who mattered to him, they moved from one place to another but never occupied the same spot twice. Once they'd gone, they were gone for good. What does it take for a friend to return? He didn't know the answer to that though he knew then that he had already fallen in love. He pictured Yuhi Kurenai in her slightly changed form as she strafed away from him, lamenting deep inside the death of a lover whose legacy was kicking strong inside her. No, she would never forget. He would never dare attempt to make her forget, either. But she would make her see.

In the morning he watched her hang certain articles of clothing to dry in front of her quarters. The same grave look took residence in her face, causing her eyes to darken like the gradual approach of a storm; her hair was un-brushed, indicating that any movement made toward her would be an early morning intrusion; her appearance, its entirety, was so much shabbier than she used to take on that it made it hard to come near her at all. There was no limit to that sadness; he knew it nonetheless as she bent down and stretched herself back to shape and repeat the process. It was etched in the sunlight, in the air, on everything she touched. That loneliness.

Then, betraying no trace of guilt and regret, he walked up to her. She was the first to offer her words.

"It's either you've fallen in love with me or with my sorrow. In any case, that's no reason for you to be taking care of me or otherwise be overcompensating." she spun around and her expression barely shifted as he closed in on the small distance between them. She knew that he'd been watching her every move, probably knew it a long time before now.

He took a deep breath, "I used to make a wager with myself, on how long I would have to keep up with these horrors inside me. I thought I wouldn't live past seventeen until seventeen turned to twenty-five, and twenty-five to twenty-nine. Now I could pass for an old man. Instead of seizing the opportunity, death delays."

"It does for you, but not for him." she muttered quietly and let the cloth rest loosely in her hands. "You think that because we share the same degree of sorrow, we should be together. But that's not how it works, not in this joint tragedy. Having two people deal with a profound loss only expands it... that emptiness."

"I don't think we should be together." he responded and it seemed to wake her and crack the shell she'd built around herself. "I should know better than to drag you into my solitude, but if you found your way into it that wasn't my doing."

"It came to me on its own."

"It did to me, too." he sighed, and the days that had withered down beneath their tombstones came back to him, swirling to his direction as if to devour him and to later net him in their wake. When they'd finally reached him, the crash was faint, gentle, caressing. "I live for people like you. Death hasn't taken me because there are those who would never get used to being a part of something they couldn't define. This sadness, for instance. When that happens, I will be there. "

"I see, so it's pity. You think it's your responsibility to feel compassion toward those who have experienced likewise."

"You know full well I'm not in any position to pity another for her grievances. But all the same, it has happened and I love you."

"To love another person because of her despair, that's something I can't see any point in."

"Even if I don't, I couldn't just stand back and watch all this eat you up."

"I don't need to be rescued, Kakashi."

"You don't want to be. You don't want my empathy." he shook his head ruefully. "All this has bound me to you. All these years there was no one to share this sadness with. The people around us, they will never understand; they will never grasp what it's like to hole up in the depth of your own loss. Do you expect to get over this, over Asuma, one of these days?"

"It's not likely, however unwise that is."

"True. And I want you to understand that I'm not going to make you. There's only so much that time can do and I can only reassure you of just as much. Kurenai, there doesn't have to be a reason. I stand by your grief because I've carried them all along, alone; but that isn't something that you can do and that's why I'm here."

She gazed at him just as color went into her eyes. What used to be cryptic and cloistered now shone in blazes, there on the pools of her eyes, red, restless. At that instant, in a single stroke of awakening, she understood that it was his way of getting even with the fate that had taken so much away from him.

"If the sadness disappears, so will your love." she said.

"It won't." he said. "The sadness will remain long after everything is gone; it's our penance for having loved."

"And lost."

"And lost." he repeated.

People are transient by nature, leaving others behind unlike the void that would thereafter replace them. It lingers in their stead, impossible to fill or forget. For two people whose loneliness is far more enormous than they are, whose void gapes wide open, only the act of surrender is their salvation. Thus, in the morning when Kakashi Hatake strode over to Yuhi Kurenai to offer her what others could not, something fused together through a condition they shared.

"I don't love you."

"You feel what I've been feeling all along. That's enough reason. Your sorrow will lead you back to me. It will teach you to love me, if in the long run it takes conscience and further suffering to do it; but come what may, whatever's yours is mine now. Let me bear the other weight of your cross. "

And as she continued looking at him, she knew it in her heart that anything was possible. Even loving someone in the face of indomitable solitude.

END


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